Generally, in a process for attaching a dash noise-insulator or dash silencer to a vehicle body, a dash silencer is attached to a vehicle body by fastening a spacer to a mounting hole formed penetratingly in the dash silencer, and engaging the spacer with a stud standing on the vehicle body. In many cases, another bracket is also attached to the vehicle body together with the dash silencer.
FIG. 9A is a sectional view of a conventional spacer, FIG. 9B is a partial sectional view of a dash silencer in the vicinity of a spacer-mounting hole thereof, and FIG. 9C is a bottom view of the conventional spacer. FIG. 10 is a sectional view of the dash silencer with the conventional spacer fastened thereinto. The conventional spacer 1 is an integral product made of synthetic resin. The spacer 1 comprises a hollow body 2, a flange 3 extending radially outward from one of the ends of the body 2, a contact flange 4 extending radially outward from the other end of the body, a plurality of stud engagement pawls 5, and a plurality of stud guide pawls 6. Each of the stud engagement and stud guide pawls extends from the other end of the body toward the hollow portion of the body. The dash silencer 7 comprises a rubber sheet 8, a felt layer 9 attached to the rubber sheet, and a spacer-mounting hole is penetratingly formed therein.
In an operation for fastening the spacer 1 to the dash silencer 7, the spacer 1 is forcedly inserted into the mounting hole of the dash silencer 7 by use of a rod, and fixed as shown in FIG. 10. The contact flange 4 of the spacer 1 has an outer diameter D1 larger than the hole diameter D0 of the mounting hole of the dash silencer 7. The outer diameter of contact flange 4 is designed in a large dimension allowing the contact flange 4 to be engaged with the lower surface of the dash silencer 7 so as to assure a reliable fixation of the spacer 1. Thus, it has been difficult to manually handle the above insertion operation due to a strong pushing force required for inserting the spacer 1. Further, after inserting the spacer 1, it has been required to forcedly deform the lower surface of the felt layer 9 of the dash silencer 7 upward to bring the lower surface around the mounting hole into engagement with the contact flange 4 so as to prevent the disengagement of the spacer 1. This leads to significantly inefficient operations.
In view of the above problems, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a spacer capable of facilitating the insertion operation therefor and reducing the time for the operation.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a spacer capable of being fastened through one-touch operation without using any tool.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a spacer capable of being inserted into a mounting hole of a dash silencer while aligning the respective centers of the spacer and the mounting hole with one another so as to perform the insertion operation with a stable pushing force.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a spacer capable of being reliably fastened to a dash silencer and hardly disengaged from the dash silencer.